“In their own right”: Sterling Memorial Library’s ceilings take the spotlight

While admiring so many of the other impressive architectural features throughout Sterling Memorial Library—architect James Gamble Rogers’s masterpiece—students, visitors, and even staff members may not always stop to look up at the treasures overhead.

In the recent article “Up above the World So High,” writer Linda Clarke and photographer Robert DeSanto document five of the decorative ceilings that soar above the library’s ground-level spaces—which Clarke rightly refers to as “works of art in their own right.”

The article—which provides interactive viewing features on several of the photos to allow scanning—conducts a tour of ceilings in the nave, the L&B Room, the Gates Classroom, the Periodical Reading Room, and the Starr Reference Room.

Read the article by Clarke and DeSanto in “It‘s Your Yale.” 

Read more about Sterling Memorial Library’s architecture and its stained-glass windows.

View the online exhibition “Architectural History of Sterling Memorial Library” on the Yale Library website.

Image: Detail of the ceiling in the Gates Classroom. Photo by Robert DeSanto

—Deborah Cannarella